O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 eBook

Animal stories fill page upon page of 1920 magazines.
Edison Marshall, represented in the 1919 volume, by
“The Elephant Remembers,” has delivered
the epic of “Brother Bill the Elk.”
In spite of its length, some fifteen thousand words,
the Committee were mightily tempted to request it
for republication. Its Western author knows the
animals in their native lairs. “Break-Neck
Hill,” for which a member of the Committee suggests
the more poignant “Heart-Break Hill” as
title, expresses sympathy for the horse in a way the
Committee believe hitherto unexploited. “Aliens”
received more votes as the best dog story of the year.

Among a number of sea-tales are those by Richard Matthews
Hallet, wherein Big Captain Hat appears. The
woman sea-captain is by way of being, for the moment,
a novel figure.

Anecdotal stories and very brief tales appear to have
received editorial sanction in 1920. “No
Flowers” is of the former genre, and
whereas certain of the Committee see in the same author’s
“The Aristocrat” a larger story, they agree
with the majority that the scintillance of this well-polished
gem should give it setting here.

Variety of setting and diversity of emotion the reader
will find in greater measure, perhaps, than in the
first volume of this series. “Butterflies,”
for example, spells unrelieved horror; “The Face
in the Window” demands sympathetic admiration
for its heroine; to read “Contact!” means
to suffer the familiar Aristotelian purging of the
emotions through tears. And their locales are
as widely dissimilar as are their emotional appeals.
With these, all of which are reprinted herein, the
reader will do well to compare Dorothy Scarborough’s
“Drought,” for the pathos of a situation
brought about by the elements of nature in Texas.

The Committee could not agree upon the first and second
prize stories. The leaders were: “Each
in His Generation,” “Contact!” “The
Thing They Loved,” “The Last Room of All,”
“Slow Poison,” “God’s Mercy”
and “Alma Mater.” No story headed
more than one list. The point system, to which
resort was made, resulted in the first prize falling
to “Each in His Generation,” by Maxwell
Struthers Burt, and the second to “Contact!”,
by Frances Newbold Noyes (now Frances Noyes Hart).

Mr. Burt’s story of Henry McCain and his nephew
Adrian compresses within legitimate story limits the
antagonism between successive generations. Each
representative, bound by traditions and customs of
the particular age to which he belongs, is bound also
by the chain of inheritance. One interested in
the outcome of the struggle between the inexorable
thrall of “period” and the inevitable bond
of race will find the solution of the problem satisfactory,
as will the reader who enjoys the individual situation
and wishes most to find out whether Uncle Henry left
his money to Adrian or rejected that choice for marriage
with the marvellous lady of his own era.